Tobacco lobby 'has to be taken on'

Minister of State for primary care Alex White yesterday described the tobacco industry as a very powerful lobby that had to be challenged.

Mr White was launching an Irish Cancer Society report, Women and Smoking: Time to Face the Crisis, compiled in association with the National Women’s Council of Ireland, which stated that smoking was causing “immense damage” to the health of people in this country.

He said the Department of Health, in consultation with the HSE, was constantly monitoring the tobacco industry’s “highly sophisticated” and “ever-evolving” marketing tactics.

“They’re a very powerful lobby internationally as well as in individual countries so they have to be contended with and they have to be sometimes challenged and taken on.”